Most of what I write has a clear positive message. I do not enjoy complaining just as I know others do not enjoy hearing complaints, so I tend to do as little of it as possible. As a word of warning, I am looking for the lesson in this story, what I can learn from it. So, I apologize in advance, if there is nothing positive for you to take away from it. Also it is a bit long and I just didn't feel like splitting it up. So, here it is.
A few months ago, back in January, I wrote about what a wonderful internet provider Comcast is (http://lnk.to/oFc0m) . Since January, we have paid them over $1500 and our internet still does not work properly.
When we call in and talk to the tier 1 representatives, most of them have no idea what we are talking about. What they are trained to deal with is people who have no internet signal at all. We get asked to do things like make sure the cable modem has power and that all of our cables are connected properly. When we inform them that the problem isn't whether or not we can connect to the internet, that the problem has something to do with lost packets, high ping times and signal degradation they start drooling and jiberring like their brains have been totally blown and are now oozing slowly out their earholes.
Each time, they want to walk us through this inane and completely useless set of steps that is designed to discover why you have no signal at all. Then once we finally get it through their heads that we do in fact have a signal, just that it is a crappy one, then they move on to asking whether or not we have a wired or a wireless network set up. When we tell them that our network is wireless, but that for testing purposes we have set up one computer that is hard wired and that it is getting the same results they latch on to the wireless portion of the conversation and then claim that they can't help us troubleshoot because our network is wireless which they do not support. We could just lie to them and say its wired. But, then we would be lying.
Through a combination of threatening to terminate our service and requests to speak to management we eventually move past that part and get to the part where they offer to send out a technician. And that is where the "fun" begins.
There isn't always someone available here to meet up with the Comcast technician. Sometimes one of us needs to come home early from work or even take time off just to be here when the technician gets here. And about half of the time, the appointment is not kept due to the technician not showing up. When we remember to complain about it, after the fact, Comcast is good about crediting our account for the missed appointment.
But all of that isn't what bothers me about this. What bothers me is when I originally blogged about this back in January, we had been having this intermittent issue with our internet service for several months. We are still having exactly the same issue. Many, many, many steps have been taken. But all have been shots in the dark.
See Comcast has this one major issue that a lot of other companies have, especially larger corporations. The problem isn't that they hire idiots or that they fail to train their employees properly. While both of these are contributing factors. It is that they do not have a centralized database that all of their employees can access.
They do have a database and when we call in some of the reps we have gotten on the phone have been able to look up notes from past calls but others have not. And something a lot of people don't realize is that the technicians that Comcast sends out do not work directly for Comcast. They are licensed contractors and have no access at all to any information about what has been going on in the past.
And THAT is what makes me mad. Whenever a technician comes out to our house, we are starting a fresh round of troubleshooting as if nothing has ever been done. They know that we have been having problems for awhile and each one wants us to see them as the super hero that fixes our problem. Each one of them has a different knowledge base and believes that different things will cause the issue that we have.
Sometimes it is declared that a new modem will fix things but they don't carry them on their truck. So an appointment has to be made to get a new modem. And then either that appointment gets cancelled without our knowledge or the appointment is kept, but a different technician comes out that knows nothing about the replacement modem we are supposed to be getting.
Then this new guy asks us what the problem is and we get to start all over.
We have actually had the cable modem replaced twice. We have run our system both with a router and without. We have used five different splitters, two of which came from Comcast( two others which "Comcast" technicians suggested but weren't supported by Comcast and one we bought from Radio Shack). Comcast technicians have twice run a completely new line from the box at the back of the house into our house, drilling a hole through our wall each time. They have run a new line from the pole to the box in the back of our house. We have been told that hooked up but unused coaxial cables for cable TV can interfere with the signal. All of our coax cables have been capped except for the main one we actually use to watch TV.
Every component inside our network has been changed, many of them more than once. Our internal network works flawlessly. We can see and interact with other computers on our network even when our internet service is down. We can have in-house Skype calls at times when there is "no internet".
It is my personal opinion that these are all just shots in the dark. Nobody actually working directly for Comcast knows or at the very least is willing to admit that they know what is causing our problems.
Multiple technicians have come out and told us that they have received nearly identical complaints from some of our neighbors. We have been told multiple times, in person, that Comcast is aware of issues with their infrastructure in our area. I think the Comcast technicians know exactly what is wrong but are contractually obligated not to tell us because it would make Comcast look bad. They know that they can't fix the problem for us and aren't allowed to tell us that. So they make up some story that will let them leave as soon as possible and make it some other person's problem
Most recently we were told by a technician, at our house, that our neighbors had improperly set up their service and that as a result their signal was spiking and "slicing" across ours and causing signal degradation and loss of signal altogether at times. Another appointment was set to have an installer come out to their house and fix the problem. Comcast cancelled that appointment without telling us or providing a reason for it. Then when we called in to find out about it nobody seemed to know what we were talking about. A technician came out today and ran a new line from the box to our house. Yay another hole in our walls.
Surprise! It didn't fix things. It seemed to work fine for about ten minutes, just long enough for the cable installer to be gone. Then we started having trouble again. They are sending someone out again in another two days. We asked for billing so we could talk about getting a credit and billing suggested we wait until the trouble is fixed so they can give us the proper credit. Does anyone in their right mind believe they are going to credit us for the last 9 months or so that we have paid for a service that hasn't worked as described?
I don't believe in complaining without having a solution. But in this case there doesn't seem to be an easy solution. Comcast offers the best consumer service in our area. AT&T is a distant second. We would go with satellite but it has its own problems that are just as bad if not worse.
Perhaps there is a provider that offers high speed internet for businesses that we could convince to work with us. We are currently paying around three thousand dollars a year. That has to fall in line with what some of the business providers are charging for similar service. The only other thing I can think of at the moment is finding out what would be involved in becoming our own ISP. I am looking for other viable solutions.
No comments:
Post a Comment